Hanging On
by Fiian
Summary: Michael needs a little help to realize that there are some things worth hanging on to. MS.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer:** I do not own anything in relation to Prison Break (though Wentworth is welcome to come live in my basement) and do not make any profit from anything. Damn.

**Rating: ** For now it's only rated T (by the dumbest rating system in the history of the world. I mean, really. I suppose T stands for 'Teen' or something, but I still prefer PG-13.) The rating may be upped for later chapters.

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**Hanging On**

Michael awoke with a frightening start in the shadows of his cell and sat up in bed. He was drenched in a cold sweat that permeated his prison attire, and he began to thrash and fight his way out of the sheets that had wound themselves around his middle during his brief sleep. Despite the sickening shakiness of his limbs, he reached out to steady himself with the freezing iron bars of his bunk and noted his rapidly quickening heartbeat in sync with his racing pulse.

Gasping as the cell began to drift in and out of his clouded vision, he shook his head violently and clenched his fingers into his hand, puncturing the fragile skin with his fingernails. The face of his dead brother strapped mercilessly into an electric chair wavered into view and, squeezing his eyes shut, he fought not to turn and vomit. As the quaking continued, Michael became increasingly panicked and realized that should he need it, no one was there to help him.

"Lincoln," he hissed into the silence, calling out for his brother. When no one answered, he called out again, this time louder and increasingly more desperate. The cold concrete swallowed up the sound, and Michael once again returned to the inevitable captivity of feeling totally alone. Suddenly, a sound pervaded the thick quiet that lay like a blanket over his mind. Fighting to decipher it through his trance, Michael finally placed the noise: Sucre. His cellmate was snoring loudly above his head, no doubt enjoying the respite of a moment of silence.

"Sucre!" Michel stood precariously and shook the man heedlessly. "Sucre," he whispered again, and his comrade shifted in his sleep. Grabbing the sleeping convict's arm for stability, Michael pushed him with wavering strength.

Sucre shot up in bed, knocking a temporarily weakened Michael back to fall on the floor and took a quick visual reconnaissance of the cell, eyes immediately falling on where the hole would be. Seeing that the toilet was still in place blocking their escape hatch, he finally traced his vision to where Michael was crumpled on the floor.

"Fish?" Sucre asked, clearly confused. When he received no response, he untangled himself from the bedding and swung over the edge to reach his cellmate.

"Fish, what the hell us going on?"

His voice wavering, Michael lifted his head and pointed out the bars of the cell towards C.O. Bellick who was on duty. "I need a doctor," he stated with convincing assurance for someone in his position.

Nodding his understanding, Sucre approached the cell door and yelled louder than was really necessary. "Hey!"

The C.O.'s head snapped up to the second floor towards the disturbance. Removing his baton clipped to the side of his belt, he jogged up the stairs towards the deviant prisoner.

"Hey you," Sucre yelled again. "Fish needs some help up here. He needs a doctor."

Ignoring his protests, Bellick approached Michael from outside of the cell and jabbed him with the club. "Get up," he ordered.

"I need a doctor," Michael repeated, lifting his shaking form from the cold concrete and eyeing Sucre thankfully.

Sizing up Michael's shuddering form and pallid complexion, the C.O. radioed for the cell door to be opened and dragged the sick man out by the back of his neck.

"You'd better not be playing me Scofield," Bellick warned. "Because you know what happens when you fuck around," he clarified and ground a boot heel into Michael's injured foot as a reminder. Sucre's eyes widened at the deliberate action, and the guard pushed the pale criminal farther down the hall, and out of sight as the cell door closed behind him.

Gasping in pain, Michael's convulsions intensified and his eyes glazed over. Bellick appeared to be convinced because his eyes widened at the reaction and he pulled Scofield out of his cell and down the stairs; the C.O. wouldn't be stupid enough to let a prisoner be hurt on his watch, and with a viable witness. That damn woman doctor was already harbouring suspicions that he was being abused, and damned if he would let a little slip-up ruin his plans for the prisoner.

Towing the injured man behind him, Bellick approached the infirmary at an unnecessary speed, anxious to get Scofield off of his hands. It was late, but not late enough that the staff had all left, and a fluorescent light shone out from the office of Doctor Sara Tancredi.

Delirious, Michael stumbled and grasped at the walls for support. He felt as if someone had drained him of all of his strength. His limbs were becoming heavy and the fuzziness of his vision was increasing. Clasping his hands together he blinked and his voice quavered.

"Doctor," he whispered desperately.

"Shut up, crook."

Bellick thumped his hand on the thick glass, startling Sara into turning around and shooting him an icy glare. When he hauled his prisoner into her view, something in her face changed, and she rushed to open the door, ignoring the sickening feeling beginning to coil heatedly in the pit of her stomach.

"Michael," she gasped. At Bellick's expression, she cleared her throat and corrected herself. "Michael Scofield. He's a diabetic. What happened here?" The accusation in her voice was evident, and garnered her a defensive look from the corrupt C.O.

"This is how I found him in his cell."

Suspect of his motives, Sara dismissed him saying: "He definitely won't be giving me any trouble tonight. You're free to leave."

All too glad to get rid of Scofield, Bellick let go of the man and watched with a sick satisfaction as he staggered towards the hospital bed and reached out for anything to steady himself. Striding out of the room quickly, the C.O. patted the baton at his side and commented. "You know where to reach me if he gets restless," he chuckled and smirked grimly at the doctor.

Ignoring his cruel statement, Sara busied herself with treating Michael. His skin was a cold tone of grey and he had a quiver that he didn't seem to be able to control. Reaching for his wrist, she checked his pulse and found it to be irregular, just as he had observed earlier. He was sweating through his clothes, and seemed to be in a state of delirium.

"Michael," she began, her voice high and only slightly panicked. "I need you to talk to me. Do you have a headache?"

"Help me, Sara." His head was pounding, but he didn't want to tell her how badly he was frightened and hurting. "I need your help." She was blurry in his line of sight, and he reached out to touch her face, making sure that she was real.

"I can help you, Michael. But I need you to tell me what is wrong. Do you have a headache?" she asked again, this time slower and more deliberate.

He nodded tiredly, feeling drained. Closing his eyes and starting to drift out of consciousness, he fought back the impending fog in his mind, and was dragged back to reality when he felt someone's hand on his arm tugging him forwards and Sara's voice in the back of his mind telling him what do.

"Michael, you're having a hypoglycemic episode. I need you to take this." She held out a white circular pill to him with a glass of water.

Taking it numbly, the last thing he remembered was swallowing the pill and falling heavily backwards onto the softness of the pristine hospital bed with Sara's face hovering in his view.

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**A/N: **Well then. This should be chapter thing if I get my act together and stop whining about my homework. I apologize for the name of the story. I ended up sitting there with a blank stare for about five minutes trying to figure out what to name it and the best I could come up with was "Hanging On". Not fantastic, but maybe I'll rethink it later. This is a Michael/Sara romance, because I am in fact a M/S shipper. I know that there wasn't much chemistry in this chapter, but be patient, it's only the prologue. Thanks for reading. 


	2. Hesitation

**Disclaimer:** Even after all of my pitiful pleading with the producers, they still refuse to turn the rights of Prison Break over into my capable albeit somewhat obsessive hands. I own nothing but my dignity.

**Rating:** I'm not actually sure of excatly what the parameters are here, so I am just going to up thr rating to M because there are some...suggestive sequences in this chapter.

**A/N: **I'm sorry if my description of hypoglycemia is a little off. I tried to do some research on the matter before I posted the first chapter, and all I came up with was that some symptoms are: shaking, sweating, fast heartbeat, impaired vision, weakness or fatigue and headache. I tried my best to incorporate those, but the rest is just from scratch because I don't really have any personal experience. :) And for treatment, 10-15 mg of glucose is needed immediately (sometimes taken in the form of a glucose tablet). If that answers any questions for you, or if I got anything wrong I'd love to be able to correct it.

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**Hanging On**

Sara sighed and brushed a stray hair out of her eyes, dutifully filling out the patient report on Michael Scofield. Her desk was small and running short of open space, but she kept it neatly organized: a testament to the way she ran the rest of her life. She has always prided herself on being sensible, punctual, and above all practical. What was the sense in a new dress when the old one fit just fine? Every path she had taken in her life was the right one, the prudent option. And it always led her in the right direction. An Ivy League education, a good job, and all the upper-scale, high-class society she could ever want.

Until Fox River.

Her father had called her crazy, and for the first few moths, Sara held in her mind the distinct possibility that she just may be. Her daily interaction with rapists and murders had definitely shifted her paradigms on life, if only to make her acutely aware of the problems of the society that worshiped the "American Dream". Working in a prison also made her hypersensitive to the issues of societal justice. On one hand, she had to be a believer, or everything she had worked for in her life was simply an elaborate hoax to keep the public's mind at rest. On the other, she saw people like Correctional Officer Bellick climb the corporate ladder despite his obvious lack of qualifications. Through her years at Fox River Penitentiary she had seen numerous injuries that weren't – they simply couldn't be – the accidents that he claimed.

At the thought, Michael Scofield's face appeared unbidden in her mind. From the moment he had walked into her office the first morning, she had known he was hiding something. Sara liked to think that she was a reasonably accurate judge of character, but that particular man had an air of secrecy about him, not to mention the fact that he seemed to be a fly-strip for trouble, and she could never quite seem to understand his motives. In a place where she was convinced that most of the people couldn't be trusted with a plastic butter knife, something made her want to applaud Michael in secrecy. She had also been entertaining other ideas of what she would like to do to him in secrecy, though she was _sure_ that such activities were not a wise decision. And it wasn't just the fact that he had been convicted of a crime, but also because she was certain he had some sort of contact with Abruzzi, who was notorious for playing his part in many, if not all, shady dealings which went on in the prison. As much as Sara tried to train herself to be cavalier, she was also fairly positive that someone in Fox River was out to get Michael Scofield. The worry and anxiousness bubbled hotly in the pit of her stomach as she thought of the mess he could make of his life in a place like this, if he managed to make it out alive.

Shaking her head disapprovingly, she turned back to her paperwork and was startled by the loud clearing of a throat behind her.

"Michael," she gasped and swiveled around in her chair, shocked to see him up and out of bed at this hour. She had already decided to spend the night in the staff quarters down the hall so that she could check on him periodically, but wasn't expecting him awake until morning.

"Sorry if I frightened you," Michael apologized, his voice rough and a little constrained. The colour was slowly coming back to his cheeks, and though he still looked fatigued, that was a commonality, which he found was almost impossible to rid himself of. The worrying over Lincoln combined with the late hours putting his plan into action left him little time to rest in between.

"Not to worry," she answered as a shiver ran through her body at the heated look he always seemed to pin her with. Standing to meet him, she motioned towards the beds in the opposite wing of the infirmary. "Well since you're up, I may as well run some tests. Standard procedure."

Michael nodded and followed her obediently. He was now clothed in only the white undershirt that he woke up in. Assuming that Sara had removed it for some reason or another, he had kept the blue button up shirt folded neatly in a pile by his bed, despite his keen urge to cover himself. Following the incident with Haywire, Michael didn't feel completely comfortable letting just anyone take lingering looks at his tattoo. It wasn't that he didn't trust Sara – because he was fairly certain that she was one of the only people that he _could_ trust – but it would be better for all parties involved if she had no knowledge of what was going to transpire in her very domain.

At her gestures, Michael sat on the bed and waited for her to pull out a clipboard and a pen.

"Your arm, please." Her voice was clipped, but not cold. It had been a traumatizing event for her to see him hauled into the medical wing in the middle of the night, quaking and pale, and she had been on edge since the incident. It wasn't that she hadn't seen such things as a doctor before, but for reasons she didn't want to examine, she had felt a cold hand clutch at her heart when she thought of him hurting and alone. _He's been abandoned all of his life. _Lincoln's voice rang with surprising clarity in her mind.

Reaching for his left arm, her fingers tingled as they came in contact with the unexpectedly soft skin. She was surprised at how cool it was, and began to lightly trace his tattoo with her index finger, running her nail along the smooth lines of transition from one symbol to another and getting carried away with the fluidity of the entire work of art. She wondered how long it must have taken him, sitting in some disreputable – because somewhere along the way she had gotten the impression that all places that did such thing to a person's body were slightly suspect – tattoo parlor, waiting for the artist to finish. She knew it must mean something, but hesitated to ask and give any indication of where her thoughts had wandered.

Her hands on his skin were gentle, almost affectionate, and it startled him more than he expected. With a quick move, he twisted his arm and caught her wrist in a firm grip, using it to pull her gently closer to him until she stood in between his parted legs. From where he was sitting on the bed he had only to lift his gaze a little and take advantage of the deep ache he saw evident in her eyes.

"Good reflexes," she stated, as he breathed hotly on her neck. Sexuality charged the air, and she was desperately trying to resist the urge to give in to the lure of temptation.

"Is this one of your tests, doctor?" Michael raised a suggestive eyebrow at her and quirked his mouth up in a devilish half-smile.

"Yes. It's called restraint," Sara whispered lowly, and subconsciously wetted her lips with her tongue.

Pulling her closer, and down towards him, Michael smiled and gave her one gentle nip right where her neck met her jaw, murmuring in her ear. "I was never much good at restraining myself."

"Michael," she warned, the quiver in her voice betraying more than just a hint of uncertainty. The question that they had both been dying to ask hung wordlessly in the air, the elephant in the room.

And then she crumbled. Grabbing him by the front of the shirt, she hauled his mouth to hers in a frantic kiss. No questions asked, no permission given, just hot voracious need lashing against their feeble walls of dissonance. No longer concerned with what would happen if they broke the boundaries of doctor-patient professionalism, Sara took all that he was offering and begged for more, pulling him impossibly closer. An alarm sounded momentarily in the back of her head reminding her who she was. Sara Tancredi: reliable, sensible, and predictable. She ignored it, and nibbled enticingly on his bottom lip.

Growling deep in his chest, Michael quickly took control, crushing her mouth to his and taking her in greedily. Impatiently, he skimmed his tongue over her lips, seeking entrance to the hot treasure within, and when they parted, he began his reckless assault on her senses. Standing, he was slightly rougher than he would have liked to be as he pushed her backwards and trapped her against the thick glass of the infirmary windows. Searing sensations swarmed his mind, leaving him with little air to breathe and no room to consider what he was doing. His thoughts had long since hazed over with a cloud of lust, leaving him only able to enjoy the sting of her nails biting into the naked skin at his neck and the short, frantic breaths she took each time they parted.

Sara bit her bottom lip, muffling a moan in Michael's neck. The constant pressure of his hand caressing her hip and his clever fingers tugging lightly at her hair made her want to purr like a cat as she arched into him, wordlessly asking for more. He had momentarily abandoned her lips to place wild, open-mouthed kisses down the porcelain column of her neck, using his teeth and tongue to taste her, his lips feeling like sun-warmed silk as they made their way over her skin.

Ignoring the loud clatter of falling medical instruments as they slammed into a cabinet, Michael made no attempt to quell the anxious need that was pouring out of him and into their frenzied kiss. Frustration, restless apprehension, fear and need merged in his mind, creating a new and dangerously addictive fusion of his energy that he somehow felt he needed to relay to Sara. God, he was going to miss her when he left, the thought hit him like a blot of lightning and he broke their kiss, stunned that he hadn't seen this coming.

Throughout all of his careful planning, the one thing that Michael had never counted on was Sara. He hadn't figured out the angles, hadn't mapped out a precise plan or plotted each separate move deliberately. He hadn't known who she was, hadn't wanted to until the first day when he laid eyes on her in the infirmary. But most of all, Michael had hoped that she wouldn't occupy that little corner of his mind: the one that was open and free from worry of Lincoln, the one that spoke to him in the dead of night and told him that everything would be okay. Now, not only had she taken over all of the spare space that he had left to give, but aspects of her were spilling over into the places of his thoughts where she really didn't belong. Like when he lay awake at night, listening and waiting for complete silence, he would recall the smell of her hair and the feel of her touch on his skin. Or when he was out in the yard and the hostile atmosphere of the prison began to smother him, he would wonder what it would be like to hold her in his arms.

And now he had to leave her.

Sensing that something was wrong, Sara disentangled herself from Michael and tried to see past the suddenly guarded look in his murky green gaze.

"Michael." She got his attention.

He raised his eyes to meet hers, noticing on the way her disheveled clothing and the warm flush cooling high on her cheekbones. Stepping back, he began to straighten away the room without so much as a word to her, his token look of indifference finding its place on his features again.

"I think we should do those tests now," he murmured, trying to ignore the injured look she cast him through her dark lashes.

"I don't understand," she began, swallowing around the lump in her throat. Reaching for him, she placed her hand on the side of his face and pulled it around so he would look at her.

"Just leave it." The bitterness in his voice surprised him, and he felt a pang of guilt slice through his abdomen when she cast her wide-eyed, misunderstanding gaze in his direction.

Her breath caught painfully in her throat, Sara turned away and reached for the glucose meter she had thrown on the bed in her haste. Pricking him carefully with the device, she struggled not to make any further contact with his skin. Despite the confusion and concern swirling spontaneously in her mind, she managed to keep her feelings at bay. But that wouldn't last long.

"Your levels are normal again," she began, reading the digital meter and ignoring the tremor in her voice. "I need to run some more tests, though, but they can be finished in the morning." Clasping her hands together to hide their slight shakiness, she avoided Michael's eyes and struggled to maintain a professional façade. "My guess is that you've lost weight since coming here and your body is now reacting to the excessive insulin dosage. I should have seen this coming," she berated herself. "I'll adjust it as soon as we finish up with your assessment. Meanwhile, you should get some rest, seeing as the fatigue probably hasn't worn off quite yet." Even though she knew it was a falsehood, the excuse gave her a reason to leave the room and sort her thoughts.

Sara now remembered why she was practical, sensible: it was safer that way. The less risks she took, the less chance she had of getting hurt. Walking away, she left Michael to sleep, knowing that she wouldn't be able to do the same.

"Sara," he called her name like it was the only thing on his mind.

Turning back towards him, a glimmer of hope shone in her eyes.

"I'm sorry."

She blinked, swallowed, and then looked up and smiled at him, the obvious falseness of the gesture shining through her eyes. "No." She sighed lowly. "It was my fault." And she walked out of the room, clicking off the light on her way past the doorway.

Lying down on the crisp, white sheets, Michael mentally reproached himself for being so foolish. All the careful planning, the months of preparation for the only thing in his life that would really matter, and he had gone and made a mess of it. He had gone and fallen in love with the charismatic, brainy, gorgeous doctor Tancredi, without a thought to her feelings.

Exhaustion weighed heavily on him, and his eyes drooped, despite the seriousness of his moral dilemma. Shifting in bed, he drifted off to a world where nothing else existed. And in this dimension where reality had no bearing, where common sense was thrown to the wind, it was Sara he tasted.

**A/N: **Dear god. I have no idea what is going on. Nor did I see where this was going to go at the beginning of the chapter. Sorry for all the angst, because it really wasn't intended to be so…forbidden-love-esque. That's just the way it turned out. I'm pretty sure that I'm not finished, seeing as I can's just leave them hanging like this, so bear with me as I try to work out just what is going to happen next. Thank you so much to all those who reviewed last chapter. I love feedback.


	3. Questions

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Prison Break, but I should seeing as the evil producers decided not to air it for a couple of weeks. I would never do that to the loyal fans. Shame on them. :)

**Rating:** M for mercurial.

**A/N:** Thanks for all the reviews on the last chapter. Up until now, I have been ignoring the entire plot-line of the story that's given by the show because I was going my own way with it, and I think I may just keep doing that. Just in case you were wondering if I was ever going to actually start writing with the plot. Probably not.

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**Hanging On**

He was a package full of contradictions. The mouth against her own had been rough and hot, but skilled and generous as well, willing to put out as much as it was receiving and more. And the tug of his hands at her clothes may have seemed impatient, if not for the ease with which he lingered over her mouth, her neck, her flawless porcelain skin. Those eyes that she had seen narrow in hatred, squint in pain, and well up with tears in frustrated guilt had watched her with an even intensity: carefully measured, yet undeniably out of control.

Sara had always wondered if he'd leave bruises, if those dexterous hands would feel as a woman thought that they would, dragging fiercely at the supple softness of her skin. She had quickly learned last night that fantasy paled in comparison to the passion his surprisingly impatient hands had ignited in her as he ran his palms over her fully clothed figure.

With any other man but Michael she would have chalked up the desperate depravity of being in prison as the reason that he could look at her like a man dying of thirst, but she knew that with him, it was different. He seemed to have had his sights fixed on her from the very beginning, and it almost mortified her to admit that she hadn't minded one bit. She had never had sex with a convict before, never even thought of it, but in that reckless moment it was she who had felt like the felon as she had shamelessly groped for the hem of his shirt, trying to toss it easily over his shoulder. But she didn't even get that far before he had casually cast her off as if they hadn't been making eyes at each other since the first day they'd met. As if there hadn't been a clear invitation issued and accepted.

It hadn't even been twelve hours since the incident, and already she was regretting letting him off the hook like she had. Liquid hot anger churned in the pit of her stomach as she thought of the easy motion with which he brushed her off, the complacent look on his face as she finished his medical exams.

"Fool," she murmured to herself, remembering the wounded look she had given him. "He played you and you believed him." But even as she spoke the words into the eerie silence of the infirmary, she had trouble believing them. Michael had never seemed like the type to use. And she wouldn't easily forget the look of quiet desperation on his face as he pleaded with he not to get involved in his life. It was too dangerous, he had said.

"Doctor Tancredi?" Sara heard someone address her from the doorway.

Clearing her throat and swiveling in the tweed office chair, she turned towards her name. "Yes?"

"Your next patient is here." The nurse that had walked in and handed Sara a file-folder was in her mid-fifties and lines of worry were beginning to crease around her eyes and mouth. Her thinning hair had been pinned back dutifully, as was policy, and was held away from her face with a bright orange clip. It was slightly juvenile and looked as though it may have at one time belonged to her daughter. Instead of metal clasps to keep her hair in place, it was constructed of pliable plastic; the staff here learned early on never to carry anything on them that could be an easily accessible weapon for an inmate. If the woman had finished her degree in University, Sara thought, she might not be standing here reporting to a doctor nearly half her age.

"Thank you, Claire." Sara murmured, and took the relatively thin file folder that was handed to her. She glanced at the name that read "SUCRE, Fernando" and shifted in her seat. The name didn't ring a bell, as she had most likely not seen him for months. Opening the folder, she sifted through his short medical history, noting that he hadn't had a significant visit in almost a year. Her gaze slew over to a darkened area of the med-bay, and with what she told herself would be the last thought of Michael Scofield today, Sara stood and made her way to the examination room of the infirmary.

Waiting for her in the small, sterile room was a man she recognized to be no older than she was. His face now registered in her mind, and she approached him with a friendly smile, remembering that she had always thought highly of him as an inmate.

"Fernando Sucre?" she asked, expecting some affirmation from him.

"Just Sucre," he indicated, sitting on the bed in front of her and fidgeting with the paper that covered its vinyl surface.

Sara nodded amiably, having no intention of calling him by his prison nickname, but trying to put him at ease. She had been around enough patients in her life to tell when someone was uncomfortable in their surrounding. Eventually she had come to face the fact that not many people were fond of the doctor, nor even liked to be in a doctor's office, and naturally had spent her time convincing many people that it wasn't as intimidating as it was made out to be.

"Your file says that you're due for a routine physical exam this month, so that's all we'll be doing today." Sara glanced around the room, as if looking for something, and on her way by him, she caught the glance of the tense inmate. She smiled again, for reassurance, and told him what he wanted to hear.

"No needles or shots this time, as I recall you're not fond of them." It always amazed her that these men who were in prison for breaking the law, and who dealt with the casual abuse that everyday life afforded them here at Fox River, could shrink at the mere sight of a hypodermic needle.

"Yeah," Sucre replied with a chortle of nervous laughter. "I don't know how Fish deals with it all the time, the needles. I can't even handle them once in a while, and he has them every day. They creep me out."

Sara jerked involuntarily. There were few patients who came to the infirmary for regular shot administration, and even the insinuation set her to break the promise that she had made to herself not to think about Michael today. He was not to be a part of her daily regiment, even though that was where he was headed as thoughts of him invaded every aspect of her daily life.

Recovering, she cleared her throat and responded. "Some people take it better than others. It's all personal really." As she instructed him to stand up, directing him towards a chair in the corner of the room, Sara fought to control her raging curiosity.

"What's that for again, Doc?" Sucre asked, motioning towards the station set up at the chair and looking questionably at the machine hooked to the chair.

"It's a sphygmomanometer," she replied, rolling the word around in her mouth. "It measures blood pressure." After she explained how to wrap the pressure cuff around his upper arm, she decided that it would be the smallest of evils to take advantage of his anxious state, recalling that he had a tendency to chatter unchecked when he was edgy.

"So," she began. "Who exactly is _Fish_?" Licking her lips nervously, she tried for a casual state of friendly disinterest.

For a moment, he looked at her as if checking to make sure that she wasn't really listening, and then began to talk to the side of her face while she shuffled through a drawer for a pencil. Thinking that she was insinuating that he and Fish were something more that just inmates, he began to quickly explain his comment. "He's just my cell-mate. He's diabetic, so he comes here a lot to get drugged up."

Hiding her emotions under a muffle of laughter at his idiom, she shot a look at him from the corner of her eye. "I see. I probably know him," she began cautiously. "Seeing as I do administer all the injections here." Pausing for another second, to jot down a note on her clipboard, she decided to press him further. "What's his name?"

"Fish?" Sucre asked, trying to read through the tangle of her hair what she was writing about him in her notes. "His name's Michael. Scofield, I think," he answered the query with little prompting seeing as he was distracted.

"Michael," she let out his name on a long breath she didn't even realize that she had been holding in. Shaking her head slightly, she quickly corrected herself. "Michael Scofield." Getting back to the physical, she added another comment. "He's in here every day for administrations. And not that it will make you feel any better, Mr. Sucre, but he takes the needles like a pro."

Sara walked to her desk, never taking her eye off of Sucre, while trying to come to terms with the fact that if there was anyone, anyone at all in this prison who may know something about Michael's past and present, he was sitting right here in front of her, nervously chewing on his bottom lip and awaiting further instruction. All rational thought fled her mind, and she failed to recognize that this _was_ in fact prison, and any information that she gleaned here would not be so easily given up as the nugget that she had just pried out of her willing patient.

"Stand up please." She directed Sucre with a suddenly soft voice as she headed towards the next part of his examination. Pulling an otoscope out of her desk drawer, she turned her face towards the window in the process. It was raining again, and for some reason, today it made her feel like sunshine inside.

"So," she began. "Michael is your cell-mate. Does he tell you more about what's going on with him than he does his doctor?" A slightly possessive note entered her voice. She was his doctor; he was her patient. That was how the relationship worked. But it had the potential to be so much more than they made of it.

"What do you mean?" he asked, trying not to squirm as he thought of her shining that little light deep into his ear.

"Well, you must know about his toe."

At the mention, Sucre stiffened and turned sharply towards the doctor, knocking the otoscope out of her hand and causing her to gasp as it clattered to the floor. A high blush appeared on her cheeks, and she now recognized the guarded expression, the same one that Michael had worn with her many a time, creep onto his face.

"Why do you want to know so much about Fish, Doc? You got a crush on him or something?" he asked, no mention of humour in his voice, no hint of uncertainty in his tone. He was sure that she understood.

"Nothing," Sara whispered, in answer to a question that no one had asked. "I was just wondering how a deliberate man like him could have such an accident."

"Everyone has accidents, Doc." The steel flint in Sucre's eyes was unmistakable.

As she leaned over to pick up the missing piece of equipment, a thought solidified in her mind, a reasoning that she couldn't simply ignore. Something was going on here. And of she had to cheat and lie like a convict to get at what it was, Sara Tancredi was prepared to do just that. She was finally prepared, she convinced herself, for once in her life, to hear the truth.

* * *

**A/N: **I know, the ending was slightly vague and a little abrupt, but at least I'm making an effort. The next chapter should be really interesting because I am planning a little bit of confrontational anxiety. I'll just let you brew on that. Sorry I haven't updated for so long, but my weekends have been taken over by the evil monster that is work. 


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